Let's Address Causes, Not Symptoms

Floor Speech

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, too often, Congress and Washington deal with symptoms, not underlying causes. And that's what's going on with this current debate about the debt limit. It's kind of like you have an ill patient that has a fever, and you say, well, they're sick so throw some water on the patient and their fever will go down. But you never deal with the underlying infection, the underlying cause that is tripping the fever in the first place.

Let me put a little map on the table here this morning, to look at the nature of current economic challenge. When you have 14 million Americans out of work, and up to 24 million who are working part-time that want to work full-time or others who have completely dropped out of the workforce, none of them are earning a full check. Money is not being taken out of that check to pay their social insurance for Social Security, and they're not going to pay their regular income taxes either. And so the government falls short on revenues. It's quite clear.

We have a jobs problem. That's the causal problem that underlies the deficit problem that America faces.

Now, if you look just at this year alone, 2011, so far this year the government's taken in over a trillion dollars--$1.2 trillion in revenue. That's not bad for an economy that's just limping along. But we've spent $1.8 trillion. So we've spent already this year over $600 billion that we didn't have. We've had to borrow that money. That borrowing gets added to the long-term deficit. But why do we have that deficit this year?

We have that deficit because the revenues aren't coming in at the same rate as in prior years because there is a jobs problem. When you have 14 million to 24 million people who want a better job and can't get one, that's the underlying cause which Washington fails to see or address.

Now, the cost of that unemployment with the attendant shortage of revenues, is added to this huge accumulated debt, which now is over $14 trillion. So where did that come from? Let me outline the reasons. The largest share, not only of this year's deficit but of prior debt that we've accumulated, is due to a lagging economy. Families know this. They can't pay as much in taxes or any taxes when they're out of work. Companies, banks, and real estate firms that go bankrupt can't pay taxes either. Revenues fall short.

If you take a look at the cost of our sluggish economy triggered and caused by Wall Street abuse, that's what threw us into this mess in the first place, right, back in 2008. The increased costs of resulting unemployment are staggering indeed: Add them up. First, we have to pay the unemployment checks, and some people even got 99 weeks of unemployment because jobs are scarce. Add to it the costs of food for those unemployed people. They are enormous.

When an economy isn't fully functioning, the Federal costs of medical care skyrocket because people fall off their own insurance. So many in this country simply can't get good care, and that's all tied in to a very sluggish economy. Yes, the costs of unemployment are huge.

Then let's add the cost of the housing meltdown. All of the bad mortgages, four out of five bad mortgages were dumped on the Federal Government. Did Wall Street take care of its dirty laundry? No. They gave it to you, the American people. At the FHA, the Federal Housing Administration, at Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, the Veterans Administration, guess who's holding all of the mortgages that are under water? Eighty percent of them. Us, the people of the United States, because Wall Street's insurance company or vacant units become the property of Uncle Sam; not Wall Street. Did Wall Street write off any losses? Oh, no, no, no. They gave them to us. That is a huge and growing part of the Federal deficit related to the housing crisis and what it is going to cost to revitalize or demolish that housing inventory.

Then, add to all this a trillion dollars more that's been spent on two wars that have not been paid for. That is a major part of the growing deficit. We can't ignore that. Do we say we should have a war tax? Do we say we should end the wars? Do we say our allies should pay more? The point is we haven't said anything other than just add that trillion dollars on the deficit.

Now let's take a look at the Bush trillion-dollar tax giveaway to the very wealthy, who said that if we gave them the money, they would create jobs in our country. Guess what? They took the money and they created jobs offshore. Corporate profits are at all-time highs, but are jobs increasing in this country? No. Those corporate profits are due to the booking here in our country of profits earned offshore.

So some say give them more tax breaks. Why, unless they invest in our country in job creation here at home. We would be foolish to waste precious dollars on more outsourcing.

And finally, former President Bush had this idea for pharmaceuticals. He said don't let the Federal Government bargain the cost of pharmaceuticals in Medicare and Medicaid expenditures. Yet when we can't do that, when we fail to negotiate the best, competitive prices, that omission adds hundreds of billions of dollars to our debt.

Mr. Speaker, to solve the deficit problem, Congress and the executive branch must focus on employing the citizens who are out of work. That is the real cause of our economic sluggishness. America ought to address causes, not symptoms.

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